


Seventeen Months Gone

by vailkagami



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Gen, nothing at all happens here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-25
Updated: 2014-05-25
Packaged: 2018-01-26 11:48:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1687184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vailkagami/pseuds/vailkagami
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shaun objects to horses on the beach, and possibly to people being happy as well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seventeen Months Gone

People were riding horses on the beach. Disgusting, thought Shaun. Way to ruin a beautiful day. Not that he minded horses as such. Fascinating creatures, once he considered their significance to history. So many things that only became possible due to the involvement of horses. They had earned their right to exist, he gave them that. He didn’t, however, give anyone the right to take them to the beach where he was trying to have a good time. Because those horses slowly walking along the water line were not making history right now. They were just leaving hoof prints and the occasional pile of dung in the sand, and even that lasted only until the next wave.

The hoof prints, that was. The dung usually lasted a little longer.

Birds were singing. Not just seagulls and their shrill cries, but bloody _song birds_ in the trees behind him. The trees offering shade to them to protect his sensitive skin from the sun that shone from the cloudless sky. Children were playing somewhere, but they were far enough down the beach not to be annoying. It was perfect, almost mockingly so. Sunshine, bird song, gentle waves and horse shit.

“This is the year of the horse by the Chinese calendar,” he said in place of what he actually wanted to say. “Wooden horse, to be exact.”

Him breaking the silence seemed to be remarkable enough for Rebecca to take her eyes off the waterfront and spare him a glance through her shades. “What, like a zodiac sign?”

“Yes.” The horses were pretty far away by now, but he could still hear the chatting voices of their riders. Happy arseholes. “Women born in the year of the fire horse have a hard time finding a husband, by the way, due to their presumed personality traits. It often let to their parents lying about the birth date.”

“Okay. Random bit of information.” Rebecca leaned forward a bit. “What, was I born in such a year?”

“No, you don’t need the help of the stars to be difficult.”

“Hah. How about you?”

Shaun grimaced. “Missed it by four years.”

Rebecca snorted. “Only you would sound pissed about not having been born an asshole.”

“Never said they were assholes. Just difficult. And I don’t need any help to be my own charming self. I got where I am all by myself.”

“Quite the accomplishment.” Rebecca let herself falls back and stared up at the leaves above her, swaying in the soft breeze. Or maybe her eyes were closed. The shades made it hard to tell.

May of 2014. Seventeen months past the world’s expiration date and neither of these people laughing and riding and eating ice cream around them had any idea. A lot of the people who died for this probably liked that. Or would like it, if they weren’t dead and therefore lacking any kind of opinion whatsoever. Shaun, for his part, was vaguely pissed off by the general air of ignorance.

The fire horse could probably turn the wooden horse to ash, until only the smell of burned flesh and ozone remained.

“Was Lucy born in a fire horse year?” Rebecca asked as if from far away.

Shaun didn’t look at her. “No.”

“I didn’t think so.” With a sigh, his friend sat up again. “Would have been nice to get an easy explanation, I guess.”

“There’s no easy explanation for anything like that. She was our friend and she wanted to betray us and now she’s dead. It’s not easy but it’s very, very simple.”

Shaun doesn’t look at her. He hates talking about Lucy. It would have been easier on his view of the world if Desmond had been the bad guy there and Lucy his innocent victim, but alas, the universe hated him. It was written in the sand over there, beneath the receding waves: The Universe Hates Shaun Hastings.

Or maybe that was just horse droppings.

“I hate doing nothing,” he said.

“Take a swim.”

“The sea is full of horse shit.”

“Then build a sand castle. Stand in the waves and try to sink to China.”

Rebecca’s words dragged Shaun’s gaze back to the water and seventeen months back in time, to that beach in Brazil where they'd had half an hour to kill before pick up and Desmond stood in the water with his jeans rolled up and used his phone to take pictures of his feet in the sand like the idiot kid that he’d been.

“I wish Juno would show up so we could finally do something.”

“Like run away,” Rebecca suggested, a half-smile on her lips.

“Would be better than this.”

“Oh yes. Day at the beach with no obligations. What have we ever done to deserve such torment?”

“Worked too well and too fast. That’s what happens when you are faster than the research team. There is no reward for capability, I’m telling you.” Shaun slumped from the low wall he was sitting on and stretched out his legs, out of the shade. “I’m going to get sunburned.”

“Not if I murder you first.” Rebecca groaned and stood. “I’m going to the bookstore, get something to read. Want me to bring you a work on history so you can pick apart the inaccuracies?”

Shaun looked at her full of adoration. “I love you.”

In response, she bent down and breathed a kiss to the top of his head. “Don’t,” she told him.

He nodded wordlessly and watched her walk away. Then he looked back to the water where a young couple stood in the waves, holding hands as they tried to let the sand sink them all the way to China.

After a minute, he took out his phone, activated the camera and took a picture of a pair of seagulls in the sky.

 

25 May 2014

**Author's Note:**

> Written for my [. Prompt: _Year of the Horse_](http://vail-kagami.dreamwidth.org/13399.html)


End file.
